The Pratchett review is part of Nathan's ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here.
Naturally, all my reviews will continue to be posted here and on
Goodreads, and my other ramblings will be posted exclusively here. All my fantasy
and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Not the world’s most original premise - Daniel Howard discovers that by
some quirk of fate, he’s the last great hope for mankind and must
undertake a dangerous quest... and so on and so forth. But then the plot
isn’t really the point. There are masses of ideas in here, all jostling
for position, strugging to get themselves noticed in the crowd. Every
page is filled with amusingly quirky talking animals or scenery,
squirrels rushing about with post-it notes and the like, or corridors
full of vine-covered forest, or tables made of ice, while our hero
stands around gawking and doing the what-the-*&^%’s-going-on role.
And there are some laugh-out-loud moments, it’s true. But comedy is
difficult to do well, and a character who ends every third sentence with
‘Oh crap!’ gets tedious pretty fast. I think there’s a good story in
here, but the author is trying too hard to be clever and amusing. For
anyone looking for a light-hearted and irreverent piece of fantasy with
the world’s most unlikely hero, this might be just the job, but for me
it just doesn’t work. One star for a DNF. [But I did like the talking
lift!]

Monday, 25 March 2013

The premise here is that Carleon, a former imperial soldier, has turned
rebel for some reason (explained later in the book), and is training up a
motley collection of disaffected soldiers, criminals and peasants to
fight. Amongst the latter is Danario, whose village was razed to the
ground by the imperial army for helping the rebels. I have problems with
this right from the start. Firstly, the main character is not merely
rebellious, but, given that his objective is to overthrow the rightful
government, he's treasonous, too. Plus he uses torture to extract
information. Normally this would make him a villain. His wife was killed
by the imperialists, but that seems to be after his rebellion, so it's
not really motivation. And frankly, he seems fairly stupid, constantly
walking into difficult situations and then being surprised when people
get killed, or the mission fails. Taking on a large, well-trained,
well-funded army needs (surprise!) another army, at least as large.
Danario, on the other hand, is more believable. He no longer has a home
or family, so joining the rebel cause seems like a reasonable step. His
meeting with the princess seems incredibly unlikely to me, but there you
go, this is fantasy, incredible things happen.

The writing is
quirky. Hair colour is ‘argent’ or ‘sterling’, port is ‘velvet-colored’,
a pine marten is ‘cinnamon-furred’, eyes are 'amaranthine'. Each time I
encounter something like this, I have to stop and work out what it
means. And velvet coloured port? Velvet might be port coloured, but the
opposite makes little sense. Every chapter is a separate episode,
disconnected from the ones before and after. Even when a chapter ends on
a dramatic cliff-hanger, turning the page means a big jump and the
outcome explained in flashback. This makes the book feel very
disjointed. Invented words are used without explanation (or else I
missed it). I never quite got the meaning of 'namhai', for instance, and
'akhai' seemed to have two different meanings, which was confusing. And
what exactly is a ‘derthai’? A really solid edit would help to smooth
away the oddities.

Having said all that, it's still a very
readable book, if short, and I kept turning the pages to find out what
happens. And then I came to the ending. Oh. My. God. Courageous is the
word that springs to mind. And also realistic, because this really is
what happens to rebellions. Kudos to the author for having the guts to
follow through with his ideas to the bitter end and not fudge the
bleakness of it. But still - I’d advise having a supply of strong liquor
to hand when reading it. There’s a good story in here, but the short
format and writing quirks tend to obscure it until the last few
chapters. At that point, though, it becomes a thought-provoking if
depressing read. Recommended for anyone who thought George R R Martin’s
writing was way too upbeat and cheerful. Three stars.

Saturday, 23 March 2013

This is a collection of novellas set in a single
world, and only loosely connected: a minor character from one story becomes
more important in the next one. Each one is published and sold separately.

#1: The
Swordsman of Carn Nebeth When a man returns to his village after nineteen
years away fighting in the wars, young William is fascinated by his stories of
the life of a soldier, and the battles he’s been in. But when other former
soldiers start to cause trouble, he realises that bravery isn’t
just for kings and soldiers. This is a cracking story of a boy growing to
manhood in a small village, and learning the truth about being a hero. Great
characterisation, a well judged balance between action and slower passages, a
perfect ending and with more emotional resonance than I’ve seen in
some well-regarded works many times its length. A beautifully crafted piece
which I loved. Five stars.

#2: The
Three Fingers of Death This book focuses on the apprentice smith seen
briefly in the previous story, and tells a tale which doesn’t
quite have the same charm as the first, but has an atmosphere all its own. The
characters here are equally well-drawn, and the story unfolds in easy stages
until the smith is called upon to use some unusual skills. And then, suddenly,
we’re in different territory altogether. I have to confess that
when the smith created the three swords of the title, it made all the hairs on
the back of my neck stand on end. Truly a fascinating perspective on the use of
magic, and the responsibilities inherent in that. Four stars.

#3: The
Giant of the Tidesmouth I’m beginning to get the hang of the
author’s strategy now, so I spotted the connecting character in the
previous book - Hedmund, the very large young man setting off for his ‘big
walk’, the period as a mercenary traditional amongst his mountain
clansmen. This story is about Hedmund’s adventures on the road and his first
battles. As always, the characters are wonderfully real, with dialogue which
captures the essence of each one. There is some solid world-building going on
in the background, too. Each story in the series can be read on its own, but
anyone who reads them all will begin to understand a great deal about the
history of this world. And possibly geography too, but for the directionally
challenged among us, a map would have been useful. This seemed a little more
lightweight than the previous two tales, and I never felt that Hedmund was in
serious danger. An enjoyable read. Four stars.

#4: The
Crown Unconquered In this story, the mysterious man, Daven, seen in the
woods of the previous tale, takes centre stage, becoming the ambassador at the
court of Normarch, a potential ally for Valec, the kingdom vanquished in the
war. The political machinations and shifting alliances are the background here,
so this one is a little more complicated but it's not hard to work out the
various factions. There's a lot of tension, since Daven has to pass through
enemy territory to reach Normarch, and then has the risk of presenting himself
to the king without knowing quite what reaction he'll get. Another cracking
story, with some great characters, just enough action and room for a romantic
distraction. I very much liked the dilemma Daven was presented with. Clearly he
has dutifully married to produce heirs, even though his wife is - not
compatible, shall we say. And then he meets Allindra... who wouldn't be
tempted? This was beautifully done. And a fine ending, too. The book may be
short, but it's absolutely perfect. Five stars.

The story so far... I don't know how many of these
tales the author plans, but with each release a little more of the created
world and recent political events is revealed, and the more fascinating it
becomes. There's a lot of subtlety here. People are honourable without being
stupid or caricatures, they behave in believable ways and display both
intelligence and strength of character. Even the bad guys have reasonable
motivations. Below the surface are some thought-provoking themes - of war and
honour and duty and bravery, the responsibility of power and the pragmatism of
politics. Each episode is a little gem in its own right, but together they add
up to something much more interesting. Highly recommended.

Thursday, 21 March 2013

This is a curious and unusual book. There has been some sort of
apocalypse, not explained, but a kind of civilisation has been
maintained or restored. There is education, trade, the arts, money,
technology. Some type of cloud or fog covers much of the sky, creating a
grey world where not much grows, but there are rumours of better places
further south with more sunshine. Marquos, the main character, lives on
a small barge, travelling restlessly around the canals and rivers of
Estalia. At some point in the recent past, he was working in the mines
to the south, but seems to have absconded, taking with him Red, a
six-year-old child, in order to return her to her parents in the north.

The
first part of the book is a fairly slow and gentle amble, stopping at
Marquos’s home town to meet his family briefly, then on northwards, with
various encounters along the way. Marquos is a strange character,
hostile to a passing group of Estalian military pursuing some rebel
Kands (foreigners), but surprisingly tolerant when he later meets up
with a couple of the Kandish rebels. Helping the Kands is likely to be a
seriously bad move, but Marquos does it anyway. The only argument the
Kands use is that their cause is just, something that should carry no
weight with Marquos, who is not Kandish and has no reason to be
sympathetic. Yet he takes them in anyway - why?

Inevitably,
things go pear-shaped, and Marquos loses Red, the one person he truly
seems to care about and want to help. And instead of setting off to
rescue her (again), he trusts the Kands to do it, and accepts a mission
to go north and find a missing scientist. I have to say, Marquos is not a
typical fantasy main character, the sort with a Destiny and a Purpose
and eyes glinting with determination. He’s more of a shrug and drift
along with life sort of man. Not that I have any objection in this case,
since Red was fairly wet, as motivational characters go, and finding
her and restoring her to her family sounds a lot less interesting at
this point than heading for the mysterious north.

Once Marquos is
committed to the Kands (and when I say committed, I mean that he shrugs
and goes along with whatever they suggest, while feebly protesting),
the pace begins to hot up and there are numerous fights and narrow
escapes and chases. And explosions. And fires. And a whole heap of death
and destruction and devastation along the way. In between times, there
are pages and pages of earnest conversations about what the Kands are
fighting for and their history and the various injustices of this world
and general philosophical discourse. Which is lovely, if you like that
sort of thing, but I would have traded much of it for some depth to the
characters (any of the characters, actually, not just Marquos) and some
more realistic human interaction.

Some grumbles. I would have
liked more information about this world, and how things now operate. If
it’s so difficult to grow things, how come there is enough food to go
round? And there seem to be no population pressures, since everyone’s
expected to marry and have children. I would have liked to know what,
exactly, the staple foods were. And a map - I desperately wanted a map.
Being post-apocalypse, I presume that Estalia is based on the real world
(Britain?), and it would have been nice to tie some of the places
mentioned to real world places. And all those canals - old ones
restored, or new ones? We’re never told. The political situation,
especially the numerous factions of tribes of Kands, seemed very
complicated to me, and I was never quite sure I’d got it straight in my
head.

The writing style is rather odd, slightly clunky as if it’s
a translation, or English was not the author’s first language. For
instance, Marquos doesn’t shave, he ‘chiselled the stubble from around
his jaw with a knife’. Sounds painful. There are numerous small,
insignificant typos which nevertheless grate when you notice them. In a
few places, a word choice was so unusual I wasn’t sure if it was a typo
or a deliberately obscure metaphor. A thorough edit would have cleaned
up a lot of the oddities.

The biggest problem I had with the book
was the lack of emotional engagement. I didn’t care much about any of
the characters. I didn’t care about their objectives. I certainly didn’t
care about the Kands and their rebellion, and I couldn’t see that they
were any better or more justified in their actions than the Border
Guards they were fighting. Partly, I suppose, this is because of Marquos
himself, who is essentially disconnected from any personal engagement.
If the main character doesn’t care about the events of his own world,
why should the reader? The writing style is a contributary factor here,
simply describing the events in a fairly flat tone and rarely delving
into what the characters are actually feeling, except for occasional
outbreaks of despair or borderline insanity.

What kept me
reading, though, was curiosity about the world. I really wanted to know
more about it, and how things work. There are some wonderfully
atmospheric passages as the barge chugs along the waterways through
grey, lifeless countryside. The north was eerily empty and cold, and the
moment when the stars appear is beautifully and vividly described. The
technology is fascinating too (gyrocopters, airships, floating castles
and a vast array of improvised weaponry). And the ending is suitably
epic and uplifting. For those who enjoy a lot of philosophising about
war and injustice and the meaning of life in a bleak steampunkish
setting with plenty of high-casualty battles and explosions, this is the
book for you, and there are some thought-provoking ideas here for those
who can tease them out of the general ramble of dialogue. I found it
too depressing a read overall to be quite comfortable, and I like my
characters a little more realistic and less arbitrary than this, but it
was certainly an interesting tale, unusual and completely unpredictable
(there was only one moment where I actually guessed what was about to
happen). Three stars.

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

This is essentially a collection of short stories gathered into one
book, telling the life of a single character, Vierra. The setting is the
forests and lakes of the far north of Scandinavia, where Vierra’s
people live a placid life as hunter/gatherers, moving around their
domain with the seasons and ruled by a female chieftain and a female
witch, as is normal for their culture. But things are changing; to the
south, there are experiments with settlement and agriculture, and from
further afield come the Vikings in their longboats, stealing goods and
capturing slaves.

Vierra’s people, the Kainu, have a complex
spiritual life, built around their environment, and involving poems to
invoke the spirits as well as actions. At Vierra’s puberty ritual, she
is told of a destiny for her, although it’s clear as the book progresses
that this is not cast in stone, and her own actions may affect things.
The various stories tell episodes from Vierra’s life, and some of it is
fairly bleak, it has to be said. Many bad things happen to Vierra, and
she herself changes as a result, losing her faith in the spirits and
perhaps losing some of her humanity along the way. She is a compelling
character, though, and I raced through the book to find out what
happened to her in the end. The other characters are somewhat less
rounded, with the possible exception of Rika. Most fall neatly into the
good or bad ends of the spectrum.

The book was translated from
Finnish, and although the translator has done a good job (this is not a
Babelfish travesty, by any means), there is some very stilted and clunky
language in places, and one or two words are outright wrong. I had the
feeling that the original language was rather elegant and poetic - not
just the poems themselves, which crop up frequently, but many of the
descriptive passages too, and along the way something got lost in
translation. Nevertheless, it was always clear what was meant, and it
never interfered with my enjoyment.

Anyone looking for a cheerful
read may be disappointed. After all her struggles, a truly happy ending
would have been too much to hope for, but it is at least uplifting.
It’s clear that’s there’s more to tell about Vierra’s life, so I guess
there will be more stories to come. This is a great read for anyone who
enjoys stories with a mythological twist, it features a truly strong
female character, and it’s set in a time and place rarely featured in
fantasy. I really enjoyed it. Four stars.

Nathan also has an ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here.
Naturally, all my reviews will continue to be posted here and on
Goodreads, and my other ramblings will be posted here. All my fantasy
and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Thursday, 14 March 2013

This is the seventh of the series about the genial
pipe-smoking George Gently, now promoted to Superintendent, and chafing rather
at his desk-bound life. The author is getting into his stride now, and many of
the rather dated quirks which enlivened the earlier books have been dropped -
no more peppermint creams, for instance, and the investigation is much more
conventional - Gently visits various suspects, asks them questions and mulls
over the answers. He even philosophises over his approach, describing it as
more art than science. There are still meals, fortunately; I do enjoy Gently’s
hearty meals. Grapefruit, followed by liver and bacon for breakfast, then toast
and marmalade. Lunch is naturally a multi-course affair - soup, steak, new
potatoes and peas, followed by apple turnover and 'custard sauce'. Not quite as
vintage as the brown Windsor soup of a previous book, but still entertainingly
large.

The other vintage aspect of these books (these
early ones were written in the mid to late fifties) is the attitude to women.
Female characters are never regarded as being worthy of attention. They may have
evidence to impart, like Dolly the barmaid (addressed simply as 'Miss'), or
they may be right in the middle of the action, like the girlfriend (addressed
respectfully as 'Miss Butters' because her father is someone of importance; the
class system is alive and well), but they are otherwise ignored. One woman who
takes a car and drives off in it causes a tremor of alarm in the policemen: you
mean she was on her own, they cry plaintively. A woman who dislikes her husband is inevitably thought to be a lesbian (even though there's absolutely no evidence of it). Often the women are portrayed as
being on the verge of hysteria. The girlfriend would be a prime suspect in any
rational story of this type, but it never occurs to anyone to investigate that
angle. A woman of that era could probably get away with literal murder because
no one would imagine her capable of it.

The actual perpetrator of the crime is not terribly
surprising, although there's a lot of obfuscation along the way to avoid
revealing the identity too soon. Gently, of course, guesses it early on and
then, Poirot-like, spends time circling around in a slightly underhand sort of
way. I have to say, though, that the murderer's motivation was not terribly
convincing. And for all the comments about how clever he was, it always seems
to me to be fairly stupid rushing round after the crime trying to pin it on
other people. Nevertheless, this was one of the better books of this series.
The attempts at dialect have almost entirely gone (not quite, sadly), the
investigation depends less on lucky breaks than before and Gently himself is
now a much more believable character. Three stars.

Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Well, I got through two thirds of it, by virtue of
listening to the audiobook while I do other, more worthwhile, things. Like
ironing. Eventually, I lost the will to live and stopped listening. I’ve
been putting off writing anything about this in case I get a sudden urge to
pick it up again and carry on, but it’s not going to happen.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this book. There are
wonderful characters, caught at a crucial moment in history. The author has
captured to perfection the sights and sounds and smells of the Tudor era. There’s
humour, too, from time to time. But there’s just so much of it, every scene
dragged out to many times the necessary length, endless discussion around meal
tables with only a few meaningful lines. If it could have been distilled to
normal book size, it would have been a very readable book. As it is, I found it
plain tedious, especially after Wolsey’s demise.

For historians, it must be a thrill to see these
important characters brought to vibrant life. For literary types, there is
pleasure in the elegant language and apt turns of phrase. For me, as a reader
looking for a story, it was a failure. There was no tension in the retelling of
events to which every child knows the ending. The one character who needed to
spring to life, Thomas Cromwell himself, was flatter than paper. He was
described in the blurb as ambitious, and other characters mention him as a
climber, yet we see no examples of it. On the contrary, he remains loyal to
Wolsey to the end, and appears to luck into his role with the king. He’s
hard working and intelligent, rather than conniving. We see something of his
family life, but rarely see any signs of affection. And in the end, I didn’t
care about him, either, or any of them, with the possible exception of Wolsey.
One star for a DNF.

Monday, 11 March 2013

This was the author’s first published work, but shortly after its appearance in 1999 the publisher sank, and the book with it. Now the author has self-published it (hurray for the digital age). Not only is it available once more, it has been picked up by a traditional publisher too. A result whichever way you look at it.

The story has one of the most original settings I’ve encountered. A cataclysmic event tore the world apart, spreading chaos everywhere apart from a few islands of stability which are kept that way by rigorous adherence to a religion-based system of rules. Travel between these islands is made possible by accurate mapping of the chaotic patches between them. Main character Keris is the daughter of a mapmaker who dies under mysterious circumstances in the unstable lands between islands, and she is forced away from her home as a result. And that doesn’t begin to describe the complexities of this world.

There’s no easy entry here. The reader is dropped into this complicated background without a parachute, so the early chapters are riddled with jargon and references to unexplained events, places, people. It isn’t long, however, before explanations begin to appear, and although it took me a long time to work out the differences between tainted, unbound, excluded, unstablers, ley-lit and the like, things do become clearer. The ley lines are the most significant element; these are the ever shifting rivers of chaotic energy which criss-cross the landscape, the source of power for Carasma, the lord of chaos and his minions.

Keris is accompanied on her journey into the unstable world between the eight stabilities by a motley collection of people - a priest following orders, a high-ranking man making a pilgrimage alone, a brothel-keeper repenting of her sins, a timid man trying to impress his father and so on. The guide, Davron, and his tainted assistant, Scow, seem almost normal by comparison. And then there's the mysterious Meldor, who is blind but surprisingly adept for all that. All of them feel like real, fully rounded people, and if they aren’t exactly people you would meet down the pub (Scow is described thus: ‘His head was built on a grand scale, perhaps twice normal size, and his outsized face was circled by an animal’s mane. The hair—fur?—of it cascaded down on to his shoulders, hiding his neck.’), they all have their own secrets and tragedies. The tainted, in particular (those caught out while crossing a ley-line and transformed in some way) are very tragic figures, unable to return to the stabilities, unable even to touch other people. Davron is particularly tragic, and the way he and Keris gradually come to understand one another, and the development of their slowly unfurling love story, undeniable and yet impossible, is masterfully done.

The story is intriguing right from the first page, and quickly builds to a fast paced and dramatic adventure. The consequence of a world infused with chaos is that anything can happen at any moment, creating a tale which crackles with tension and (I’ll be honest) fear; some of those tainted and wild creatures were pretty horrifying. And yet there was always humour, too, especially from Corrian, the pipe-smoking former brothel-keeper with her down-to-earth attitude and appetite for life, and the timid Quirk, who takes to life in the unstable world with surprising nonchalance.

The religion of this world is not, at first sight, much different from any other hierarchical, rigid, dogmatic religion, but beneath the surface it’s unusual. For one thing, it’s an integral part of the division between stable and unstable areas. The stable zones are maintained by the continuous application of kinesis (a kind of gesture) around the borders and rigorous adherence to exhaustively detailed rules within the boundaries, which prescribe what may be grown where, what colours and styles of clothing may be worn, how many children may be born and what jobs they can do. All of this is intended to minimise the number of changes occurring and thus maintain order, a kind of stultifying stasis. Inevitably, this leads to some painfully inhumane results. Babies surplus to the permitted two are removed at birth and brought up in the religious order. Those who are deformed or who defy authority are thrown out of the stabilities altogether, left to survive as best they can. Inevitably, such a system has its share of the secretly defiant, the petty tale-tellers and the corrupt, who will bend the rules or turn a blind eye for a consideration. I wasn’t sure whether the author was making a general point about organised religion, but I found it very thought-provoking.

This book is awesome. It has all the characteristics I look for in fantasy: an original, well thought out world, a simple but powerful magic system, compelling characters who behave realistically, and a plot which never lets up for a moment. It’s emotionally engaging, too; I always cared about the characters and there were moments that reduced me to tears. Keris the map-maker’s daughter is a fantastic heroine, and the ending - well, the ending was perfect, I can’t describe it any other way. A truly wonderful story. Five stars.

Thursday, 7 March 2013

This was written in 1968 and was supposedly the inspiration for the
popular TV series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and (much later) Downton Abbey.
The author describes her impoverished childhood, and then her
experiences of working in service for various wealthy families, first as
a kitchen maid and later as a cook.

The writing style is best
described as naive. It reads as if she were simply chatting about her
life, talking in her everyday manner, with all the repetitions and
clichés intact. Everything is ‘marvellous’ or ‘tremendous’ or ‘I
remember an occasion...’. I have an image of her as an old lady sitting
in a wing chair beside the fire, telling her tales as someone (a
favourite neice, perhaps) takes down her words. Which is the intention, I
daresay.

The early chapters about her childhood and family are
fairly stilted and dull, although there are occasional anecdotes that
liven things up, and the author’s own personality shines through. Bolshy
is the word that comes to my mind. She’s definitely not a meek and mild
sort, and you wouldn’t think that a life of servitude to the upper
classes would suit her, really. Once she starts work as a kitchenmaid,
her asides about the disparity of life above and below stairs become an
entertaining feature. Upstairs is furnished with plush carpets, elegant
draperies and fine furniture, while downstairs is lino and wobbly
cast-off chairs. Vast quantities of food are cooked, picked at and later
thrown away by the fussy family upstairs, while down below the servants
never have quite enough to eat.

At first, as the harrassed and
put-upon kitchen maid, the chapters are full of grumbles, but as she
branches out and becomes a cook, there’s more about the pleasures of
life downstairs and the humour shines through. The most interesting
aspect, for me, was the difference between those employers who treated
their staff as little more than slaves, and those, more enlightened, who
treated them as people. Some houses the author worked in provided
properly furnished rooms for the servants, with plenty of modern
equipment and good wages, and the staff were generally contented and
stayed for many years. It was an era of transition, the period between
the wars when staff were increasingly hard to find and so conditions had
to improve, but some grand folk apparently adapted better than others
to the new circumstances.

The author was always focused on
getting a husband and thereby escaping from domestic service altogether,
but it seemed to me that her married life was in many ways harder and
less comfortable than her life as a cook. Certainly she had more
freedom, but she was never well off, and at times was desperate for
money. But at least she had the intelligence to see the value of
education, and took evening classes and read a great deal. This
(combined with her bolshy nature) gave her a certain self-confidence. My
favourite moment from the book is when her posh employer tells her off
for damaging a mirror. ‘You must treat things better, Margaret,’ she
said. ‘Don’t you love good objects?’ ‘No, I don’t, Mrs Schwab,’ I said.
‘To me they’re just material things; I have an affinity with G. K.
Chesterton who wrote about the malignity of inanimate objects,’ I said,
‘and I think they are malign because they take up so much of my time,
dusting, polishing, and cleaning them.’ At this point in her life, she
was a daily cleaner, and any daily who can answer back with such a quote
(the malignity of inanimate objects!) is at least the equal of her
employer, in my view.

Not the best written book ever, and it
starts slowly, but it’s still a fascinating look at a lost way of life,
and an entertaining read. Three stars.

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Anyone who’s watched the TV detective series ‘Castle’, featuring Nathan
Fillion as a writer tailing a NYPD cop solving murders, will know that
this is the book that featured in the show, the book that Castle the
character supposedly wrote as a result of his experience with the cops.
The joke, of course, is that the characters in the book are thinly
disguised copies of their TV show counterparts: Castle is Rook (a
Pullitzer-prize winning journalist this time, not a fiction writer),
Kate Beckett is Nikki Heat, sidekicks Esposito and Ryan are Ochoa and
Raley, pathologist Lanie is Lauren and so on. Except that this time, the
sexual tension between the two main characters is resolved in the
steamy sex scene on page 105 (as fans will surely remember from the
show).

As a murder mystery, this is a fairly run of the mill
affair, but it rattles along pretty well and the plot really isn’t the
point, after all. I found the overuse of slang and jargon a bit trying,
but it does fit with the character. A (fictional) writer researching a
book like this might very well accumulate a whole bunch of such phrases
and sprinkle them absolutely everywhere. And it’s very funny imagining
Castle writing this stuff. It seems like a hack piece of work, but then
that’s the intention, so it’s actually quite cleverly done. Not
recommended for anyone unfamiliar with the show, but for fans who would
likely get all the jokes and sly references, this is an entertaining
piece of fluff. Three stars.

The Pratchett review is part of Nathan's ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

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and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

This is billed as a steampunk fantasy, but don’t be fooled. The
steampunk elements are negligible. In reality, this is a romance with a
fantasy background. Since the heroine is seventeen and there’s a bit of a
love triangle, I suppose it’s YA, too. The book has perhaps the most
cliché-riddled opening I've ever encountered. The main character is an
orphan with mysterious powers. She makes a living on the streets as a
pick-pocket [*], disguised as a boy. Despite the disguise, twice during
the first couple of chapters she suffers violent attempted rapes. She is
betrayed by a former friend, arrested for a murder she didn't commit,
and condemned to death. But she escapes and manages to run away. It's
all pretty familiar stuff. It just needs a prophecy, a magic sword and a
quest to complete the set (maybe that comes later...). And yet, despite
the predictability, I kept reading, which is, I suppose, a testament of
sorts to the author's writing ability, if not her originality.

[*]
Why oh why do orphaned children always end up on the streets in
fantasyland, their only option thievery or prostitution? Did their
parents have no friends who might help them out? Is the town so lawless
that orphans are simply abandoned to their fate? Is there really no
honest work to be had?

The biggest interest for me is the main
character's magical ability. Llew has the power to heal herself when
injured, but only by drawing the life force from some other living thing
- human, animal or plant. This is such an intriguing power that I
really want to know more about it. Then there's Braph, a man with a
mysterious background who is clearly searching for Llew, for reasons
unknown. (Horrible thought: maybe she's the secret heir to the kingdom?
No, surely not.) Less intriguing by far is the romantic interest. We
know he's the romantic interest from the start because Llew comments on
his nice ass, and mentions how handsome he is. Needless to say, he
dislikes her on sight.

The plot isn’t much to write home about,
but it’s serviceable. Llew picks up with a group heading north to the
only port on a long, thin island-continent (really? no other suitable
place?). There are encounters with highwaymen, Braph the Mysterious and
the law, since Llew is still wanted for murder, and now witchcraft,
since she used her magic to escape hanging. This is all good fun, and
there’s the expected moment where Llew’s less-than-convincing boy
disguise fails, and her new friends pop her in a frock for dinner. Cue
much ogling from the men. There are some logic fails: a day when they
appeared to have lunch twice, a bedroom scene segues to the garden and
back again, and a time on a boat when Llew needed a living being to draw
energy from, and everyone forgot about the horses in the hold. But
still, things rattle along nicely, with one misadventure after another.

In
a shock twist (not), the group includes the romantic interest, Jonas,
who despite being a mean, cynical killing machine, immediately gets the
hots for our heroine. He also shows his sensitive side, bringing her
cloths when her period starts, giving her cute little hugs when she’s
down and cuddling in bed in a heroically non-libidinous way at night. I
began to wonder when they would start doing each other’s hair. But this
does highlight the biggest problem I had with this book - the characters
don’t behave in believable ways. When Jonas and Llew sneak out at night
to meet up with Braph, a man known to be hostile and with probably evil
intentions, how do they pass the time while they wait for him to show
up? Sharpening their knives, perhaps? Discussing tactics? Hiding so they
have the element of surprise? No, they lie down in plain view and get
all hot and steamy. And when a child is accidentally killed, everyone
acts like it’s the greatest tragedy ever, and Jonas is so distraught he
gets wildly drunk. This is the man who says ‘I’ve killed... dozens,
hundreds.’ Then when Braph does eventually turn up, no one recognises
him or gets even remotely alarmed. There are any number of oddities like
this.

I found this a very frustrating read. On the one hand,
there's some wonderful magic, solid world-building and an interesting
steampunkish vaguely western feel to it. The author's writing style is
neat and unobtrusive, and the plot moves along at a fair canter. On the
other hand, the romantic element pops up at the most inopportune
moments, and the characters just don't behave rationally. There are also
aspects that aren't explained well (or perhaps I just failed to get it,
I don't know; I never did work out quite who Emylia was - friend,
relative or paid chaperone?), so there are a number of
wait-did-we-know-that? moments along the way. Better editing would have
smoothed out some inconsistencies and odd hiccups, filled in the
strangely sketchy minor characters and produced a better flow. But
despite all the issues, I kept reading, sneaking a chapter here and
there when I was supposed to be doing something else, until the ending
lost me. Sadly, the last few chapters are littered with unlikely events,
coindidences and outright deus ex machina. For those who can enjoy the
romance, the interesting setting and a terrific magic system, and don’t
mind the implausibilities, this would be a great read, and it’s clear
the author can write, but for me it just didn’t work. Two stars.